12 quotes
From his loftiest pulpit the modern clerc assures man that he is great in proportion as he is practical.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
That teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent alone.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
The modern moralists extol … the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action...
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
That teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively little esteem for the truly thinking portion of himself and to honor the active and willing part of himself with all his devotion...
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
One of the principle causes is that the modern world has made the clerc into a citizen, subject to all the responsibilities of a citizen, and consequently to despise lay passions is far more difficult for him than for his predecessors.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
If shame is cried upon him, … he will point out … that today he has to earn his living, and that it is not his fault if he is eager to support the class which takes a pleasure in his productions.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who … does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his discoveries to others.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
Teachers … preach “the superiority of the intelligence”; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the practical.
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
Up until our own times men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and morality. One was Plato’s and it said: “Morality decides politics”; and the other was Machiavelli’s, and it said “Politics have nothing to do with morality.” Today we receive a third. M. Maurras teaches: “Politics decide morality.”
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)